The Cranes Are Flying

The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli, 1957) is Mikhail Kalatozov's wartime love story, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Two young people in Moscow are about to marry when the war takes everything off course.

On the eve of the invasion, Veronika and Boris stroll by the river and watch cranes pass overhead. The next morning fighting breaks out, and Boris volunteers for the front before they can say goodbye. Veronika waits, and the waiting nearly breaks her — air raids, a bombed-out home, a husband's family she moves in with, and a choice she will spend the rest of the film regretting. Tatyana Samoylova and Aleksei Batalov play it raw, with almost everything happening in their eyes.

Cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky shot images that film schools still take apart frame by frame: the spiraling camera on the staircase, the crowd at the send-off, the dying soldier's vision of birch trees and a wedding that never was. At Cannes in 1958 it took the Palme d'Or — still the only Russian film to win the festival's top prize. Start here if you love movies where the camera carries as much feeling as the actors. Stream The Cranes Are Flying (1957) online on iFILM.